An examination of aspects of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) from a scientific perspective.

Monday, April 16, 2018

I shot at a UFO

Hi all,

I have read of cases from overseas where individuals have claimed to have used a gun to fire at UAP. However, until today, I had never come across such a reported occurrence here in Australia.

I was browsing through a global collection of data, compiled by US researcher Michael Swords and located an Australian sighting, sent to the USA, by the Australian Centre for UFO Studies.

Part of the report form

Document
What I found was an investigation report by R Delillo and R H Marx (reference number NA78072.) They interviewed one of the two witnesses on 12 June 1978.

Part of the investigation report

Mr G Cooke was then a 27 year old motor mechanic from Liverpool, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was married with two children. At the time of the incident he was with a friend on a property near Orange, New South Wales, in June 1969. His statement reads:

"We went to Orange to go shooting. It was at a place about 10 miles out of town and fairly hilly and very rocky, with large boulders six feet in diameter and a few trees.It was a grazing property but we were on a slope which was above the area used for grazing. We had been out for quite a while, about 3 hours.

We were going up a hill which was fairly steep in a four wheel drive vehicle and were getting no further. My friend and I got out of the vehicle and were standing around it discussing what to do when we noticed a light in the sky.

We were about half way up the hill, that is about 200 feet from the bottom of the hill and there was another hill opposite us with a creek in between the two hills.

Sketch of the scene

The light was above the hill opposite us.It appeared to be like the headlights of an aircraft but it was moving very, very slowly towards us. I didn't take any notice of it thinking it was an aircraft.

After a couple of minutes it seemed to be at a point above the opposite hill about 50 feet above the tree line on top of the hill. It then began to move slowly down the front of the hill. We then turned our car headlights off because we didn't know what might happen. We could tell its position because the light lit up the tree tops in an area directly below it. The light appeared to reflect off the leaves in the tops of the trees but did not illuminate the ground below the trees.

At this stage we thought it might be a helicopter but there was absolute silence. After about 3 or 4 minutes it reached a point level with us on the opposite hill and came to a stop. It looked just like the headlight of a car but lacked the distinct beam of a car headlight. It was very bright, with the colour of a quartz halogen headlight.Very white and gave the impression of being slightly larger than a car headlight.

We didn't know what to do and were beginning to feel uncomfortable. It was still about 50 feet above the trees and we could estimate the distance since the hill was behind it. My friend said "Oh blow it" and picked up a rifle and fired at it. As soon as he fired the shot the light went out. He used a 243 rifle and was a pretty good shot. The light left a brief after image for about 2-3 seconds. After half a minute we trained spotlights all over the hill but could not see anything. We went immediately home.

We discussed the event that night and couldn't sleep well for we had no idea what it could have been and were afraid it might have been a fellow with a torch. We went back the next morning and spent a couple of hours searching the hill for any signs; vehicle tracks; footprints; anything, but found nothing. It had been raining the night before the incident so if anyone had been there they would have left tracks in the very soggy ground.

To this day I have no idea what it could have been."

A second shooting incident
Intrigued by the above account I did a search of my Australian newspaper clipping collection, scouring them for any such accounts. To my surprise, I found details of a second shooting incident.

The page one head-lines of an uncited Sydney newspaper, dated Monday 7 May 1979 were:

Page two of the story

"Shots fired as UFO panics town."

"A local civil servant fired a volley of shots at a UFO hovering over the West Australian town of Eucla.

And UFO fever has gripped this tiny town following sightings over the past three nights of a mystery red and silver object.

The 20 townspeople are in a whirl over the sightings but a spokesman for the RAAF said it was unlikely to send an aircraft to intercept the UFO.

A local agricultural officer who fired a high powered rifle at the UFO said "It zoomed off in a flash."

At lunchtime yesterday several people who sighted the cigar shaped shiny UFO which appeared to be moving towards the town from the South Australian border.

After the sighing the object veered away from Eucla but was spotted by several people throughout the afternoon.

The shots were fired at the object by Mr A Hardy, a permit control officer with the Department of Agriculture.

"I just wanted to see what would happen," Mr Hardy said.

"It zoomed off in a flash to a much greater height and sat there for three or four hours...

Eucla police believe it may be just a bunch of helium filled party balloons which escaped from a dance at a nearby hotel..."